Voices of Partners: Findings from the Community/Stakeholder Engagement Study

Building Healthy Communities has brought significant value and impact in the fights for health equity and health justice in our communities and across our state, and we need to continue this work and this journey. We have contributed to a new narrative for community health—we appreciate the emphasis on inclusion, justice, and equity, and we have seen real policy and systems improvements in several key areas. But in order for us to optimize the potential impact of Building Healthy Communities, The California Endowment (TCE) must do better on certain fronts. We need more humility from TCE, and less arrogance; we need more true partnership, and less top-down; we need more input into decisions, and not merely communications about decisions that have been made; we need more of an emphasis from TCE on building our capacity to lead change, and less 'doing and directing' from TCE staff. Finally, we need a combination of stronger alignment of efforts, improved communications about efforts, and more private sector resources rallying to the vision of BHC. So, stay in the fight—we want to own BHC, and this is how we'd like to see you raise your game.